How To Make Your Video Go Viral On YouTube

Back to Contents

Going viral on YouTube is no simple feat. It goes beyond just coming up with a great video. There’s a lot of work that goes into it. At the same time, there are rockstar YouTubers who go viral every time they release a video. How do they do it? The truth is, a lot of the time videos go viral because the video team applies various strategies that increase their visibility online. By using these strategies, you can discover how to make your video popular on YouTube.

Below are some marketing strategies you can use when you’re trying to find out how to make your video go viral.

Be short and to the point

People don’t come to YouTube to watch the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. They come for a quick break. This means that you should not make your video too long for people to watch all the way through. People use video length to decide whether or not they will watch a video. Shorter, high-quality videos generally attract more views, shares and comments. However, when shaving seconds off your video, ensure that you are able to maintain your key point or message.

Evoke positive emotions

As the great American author and poet Maya Angelou said, people will forget what you said, they will forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel. Such is the power of emotions. Happiness. Sadness. Excitement. Fear. Anxiety. These are emotions people experience on a daily basis. And you can use them to capture and engage your viewers. For your video to have maximum impact, it needs to connect with your viewers and make them feel something.

When people experience these feelings, they naturally want to share them with their friends, and thus they are more likely to share your videos. This is especially so for videos that evoke positive feelings. The best way of creating videos that draw up your viewers’ emotions is by putting yourself in their shoes and understanding the emotions that drive them to take action.

Give it a great title

After the video itself, the title is the second most important piece of content on your page. What can you do to ensure your video title is optimized to go viral? First, ensure that your video is searchable. Conduct a keyword research of what people in your niche are searching for and include these words in your video title. When incorporating keywords in your title, however, make sure you use them in a natural way.

Additionally, you should keep your video title short. Not only does this make your videos memorable, it also ensures that your title is not truncated by Google. Ideally, you should aim for about 55 characters. However, your title should also be descriptive. It needs to clearly explain what the video is about. Pretend you’re referencing the video to a friend. What would be the easiest way to describe your video? Use that as your title.

Build a team around the video

Who else stands to benefit when your video goes viral? Create a team of affiliates that will have a stake in your video. For instance, if you do a dance video, get sponsors to give you the clothes you wear. Once you upload the video, you can link to your sponsors and the music you danced to. Include them in the description or even mention them in the video with an annotation and they will have a stake in sending you traffic and will share the video with their networks.

Post it on social news sites

To go viral, you need to let people know about your video. Share it on various social networks like Facebook and Twitter, and ask your friends to share it with their networks. Tag and tweet it to anyone who has a stake in its success. Share the video on any relevant sub-reddits. If you have a blog or website, embed it there. Email a link of the video to bloggers in your niche and encourage them to share it with their readers. Check out all forums where the video might be well received and place it there.

Send it to influencers

Influencers can be a great source of traffic for your video. Do you have any relationships with anyone with access to a large online audience? If so, send your video to them and ask them if they would mind sharing it. If you don’t have any relationships built, it’s alright to send your video to people who you don’t know personally but still may be interested. As they share it with their followers, who then share it with their followers, your video will gain a much greater reach.

Buy high-quality views

Buying views is another great way of attracting traffic to your video. It works because of human psychology. When we think something is popular, it becomes less risky to support it and share it. Once you buy views, your video appears to be popular, thus more people will be willing to watch it and share it with their friends.

However, to benefit from this, you need to ensure that you buy high-quality views. Low-quality views from spam accounts have low retention rates, originate from random countries, have no engagements and will likely get deleted right away by YouTube. High-quality views, on the other hand, are real and genuine. They have high retention rates, originate from relevant countries, have high viewer engagements and won’t be deleted by YouTube anytime soon.

How to make your video go viral? Make it worth watching!

The above strategies will help make your videos popular and set them up to go viral. However, you should remember that the most important thing is making a video that is worth watching. None of the above strategies will work if you don’t create a video that people want to watch.